Want to lower your handicap? Cure that sleep apnea!

Sleep apnea patients who have been less than religious about their treatments now have a new motivation to comply with their doctors' orders: lower golf scores. A new study, featured in Scientific American, found that patients who regularly used their NPAP machines lowered their handicaps by up to three strokes. People with sleep apnea stop breathing for short periods of time multiple times a night. In severe cases, people can stop breathing up to 50 times an hour, according to health.com. Twelve golfers with apnea received nasal positive airway pressuretreatment, or NPAP. The researchers kept track of the subjects’ daytimetiredness, sleep and golf scores over 20 rounds. And handicaps improvedby an average of a stroke-and-a-half per round. With the better golfersgoing in showing the most improvement. The scores on the medical testsalso got better. A control group didn’t improve their game or theirsleep.